


when there's nothing left to burn

by spookyfoot



Series: things behind the sun [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, I had to fuck with the ages a little but just go with it, Keith pilots the kerberos mission, M/M, Presumed Dead, Role Reversal, but not completely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-06 19:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16393874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyfoot/pseuds/spookyfoot
Summary: Everyone keeps insisting that Keith is dead; no one but Shiro seems interested in keeping his memory alive. Keith is a dying flame, cradled in the cathedral between Shiro’s palms and Shiro is his sole shelter against the oncoming storm.“I made a promise," Shiro says. "I told Keith I'd never give up on him—and I won’t.”“What happens when one of our satellites finds thePersephone? How will you convince yourself he’s still out there?” Adam pauses, “How many times are you going to keep doing this to yourself?”“As many times as it takes. Until I find him.”Officer Keith Kogane pilots the Kerberos mission. Shiro loses his best friend to the vacuum of space.





	1. live through this (and you won't look back)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to katy, liz, and akiko, who've listened to me yell about this since july.

Shiro doesn’t punch Iverson in the face, but it’s a close thing. Instead, he picks a fight with a wall. After, he bandages his bruised, split-knuckled fist in the cool, lonely lamplight of his room. Interior decorating has never been high on the Garrison’s list of priorities.

 _Pilot error_.  

It’s a thorn burrowed in Shiro’s chest, making a home right beside his heartbeat. 

_Pilot error._  

From Keith. Keith who’d been well on his way to blasting through Shiro’s best scores the moment he stepped into the sim; Keith whose skill forced the Garrison engineers to reprogram their test flights to give him an actual challenge; Keith who took to the crags and canyons of the nearby desert like they were nothing but gentle hills and valleys; Keith—the youngest person to ever pilot a mission this deep into space; Keith who Shiro recommended take his place on the Kerberos mission when it became clear the cast holding Shiro’s left leg in place wouldn’t come off in time. 

Keith who was gone.

The cast came off. The bones healed. But there were bruises and scars buried beneath his skin, and fractures no cast could fix. No cast that could hold Shiro together. 

_Should have expected it from Kogane_ , they whispered. _Never should have picked a hothead like him to pilot the mission. When you fly too close to the sun, you’re gonna get burned_ , they sneered. 

But they were wrong; Keith was— _is_ —the sun. Bright, bold, and unerring at charting his course across the sky. 

Shiro knows Keith, knows that he’s no Icarus. Shiro also knows a lie when he hears one. 

Here’s what Shiro also knows: that his muscles are deteriorating faster than any of the doctors expected; that even though the cast came off his leg has never felt the same; that there are things that neither time nor medicine could mend; that they may have lost the Kerberos crew to the vacuum of space but that it sure as hell wasn’t pilot error.

He drifts through the rest of his day, smiles and nods in all the right places. He looks away when he sees a cadet that looks too much like Matt. He wants to take a second glance but his chin pulls center despite himself, just to keep his face from cracking. There’s only so much he can take. Everyone has a breaking point and he’s run up against his—he has to get out of here. 

But he can’t. 

Professor Montgomery needs him for a flight simulation. Commander Tseng sent a message to his data pad about arrangements for Keith’s things. He gets an email from Captain Ahn denying his request for personal leave. All this within a few minutes. Now, more than ever, he feels like Atlas propping up a burden of his own creation. He’s the face of the Galaxy Garrison, and everyone's watching. Time and circumstance ripped the ground out from under him but he has to keep standing. 

The desert calls to him, something humming under the sand, seeping into his veins. 

The first chance he gets, he answers. 

//

_Shiro first meets Keith on an unremarkable Tuesday in April._ _Keith, underfed and underqualified, blows Shiro's sim scores out of the water. Out of the stratosphere._  

_His teacher is dismissive. Keith has discipline issues._ _Keith is two years older than his classmates. Keith_ _was homeschooled for two years, and the knowledge hadn’t translated to standardized tests._ _Keith is scrawny and tough and reticent and determined._  

_Keith is a better pilot than Shiro was at that age._  

_Shiro’s not taking no for an answer unless it comes from Keith himself._ _Keith eyes the sim controls with undeniable hunger before breaking away from the crowd, so Shiro likes his odds. He watches each student take their turn, but he's drawn to Keith. Keith who's picking at his nails and staring into the distance with calculated disinterest._  

_Shiro decides right then and there that he wants to see him fly._  

_Keith does more than fly—he soars._ _He also makes off with Shiro’s car. But after seeing Keith’s sim scores, Shiro figures it’s a fair trade off._  

_In the years after, Keith proves him right and more, time and time again._  

//

Shiro sits on the back of his hoverbike, waiting for something he can’t quite name. Waiting for something to prove his suspicions right. Without Keith’s body blazing a line of heat against his side, the desert feels much too large for one person. The nights are colder than he remembered. When the weight of expectations found Shiro twisting himself into shapes that he didn’t recognize, he'd find Keith and they'd take their bikes into the desert. They'd throw off the shadows of expectation and find something freer, wilder, underneath. 

The sun sets. The last rays of sunlight bleed out below the horizon. Nightfall leeches all the warmth from Shiro’s skin.

_There’s something out there_ , he thinks. Something hums with anticipation, keeping Shiro out in the desert well past curfew. He’ll stay in the shack that night, he decides, camp out on the barest excuse for a bed.

The shack is small, and Shiro’s never been here alone. Despite the boxes of clutter lining the sides, it feels empty in a way it never did before. He could clean this place up. Everyone keeps telling him Keith will never come back to do it himself. Still, Shiro leaves them as they are. He can see the bones of what once made this a home. 

Keith had taken him here for the first time not long after Shiro’s fights with Adam had gotten meaner and more frequent. After Shiro had put his name in for the Kerberos mission. It had been Keith’s refuge first, and Keith, prickly but kind, had let Shiro make it his, too. 

With star charts papering the walls and radio equipment stacked high in every corner, the shack feels like a way station to something bigger. 

He runs his fingers over the faded maps. He’s not sure how old they are, but they’ve been here long enough that they pull at the tacks pinning them to the wall. It’s the far reaches of space; planets and nebulas that the Galaxy Garrison has only ever mapped from a million light years away, places they may not reach for centuries. Shiro traces the outline of distant stars with his fingertips. In one corner someone's scrawled a jagged symbol Shiro’s never seen before. It's almost like lightning—or a body coiled, waiting to strike.  

In the desert, something hums, louder than before. 

_Come find me._  

_//_

_In the aftermath, Shiro finds Keith. He shows up at Keith’s small room with bloodshot eyes and a bottle in hand. Shiro’s courting danger, carrying an open container of alcohol around the Garrison. He can’t bring himself to care. He leans on the doorway as Keith opens it, hair tousled and an oversized shirt hanging off one shoulder._  

_“Shiro,” Keith rasps, rubbing at one of his eyes. “What’s going—” Keith stops short when he sees the amber bottle dangling from Shiro’s fingers. He moves to the side in a silent invitation._  

_After his promotion a year ago, Keith had taken a small room at the end of the quiet hall. He's far away from most of the officers quarters, and Shiro knows he prefers it that way. Keith’s room is neat and spartan, aside from the rumpled bed spread. It feels like a safe haven._ _Shiro had arrived at his apartment that evening and found it stripped bare of all that made it a home. At first, anger; then: alcohol. But neither had made being there any easier. In the wake of three shots of whiskey, staying there became unbearable. Shiro had staggered down the halls to find comfort in the one person who knew the whole story. Or Shiro’s side of it, at least._  

_For his part, Keith had never shown Adam more than passing politeness. They’d put on their best faces when forced to spend time together. But Keith's subdued and deferential attitude felt more like an insult than any jabs he could dish out._  

_“I told Adam I’m going on the mission,” Shiro says. “He told me not to expect him to be there when I got back. Seems like he decided to get a head start.”_  

_Keith’s jaw clenches and he squeezes handfuls of his sheets between his fists. He looks at Shiro and blows a strand of too-long hair out of his face. He unclenches his fists, letting the sheets slide through his fingers. “You wanna get out of here?”_  

_And Shiro does. He really does._  

_They sneak into the garage. Shiro stumbles over himself in his attempts to keep quiet and Keith bites his lip to keep from laughing before smothering a snort with his fist. The hoverbike bay is dim and empty aside from the emergency lights and the lingering smell of exhaust. Keith hotwires Shiro’s hoverbike and Shiro, Shiro should disapprove—but he doesn't. Instead, there’s a hot sort of thrill racing up his spine. He may have made Keith’s acceptance to the Garrison his responsibility, years ago, but Keith had never made him feel like he_ had _to be responsible. The opposite, in fact. The time spent with Keith is the whistle of wind past his ears as he dove off a cliff, the thud of his heart in his chest, the burn in his muscles—not because the ticking clock threaded through the helix of his DNA, but from effort and the reminder that there were—are—still things he could do._  

_“Nope, you’re riding with me tonight,” Keith says, when Shiro staggers over to a bike. Shiro protests but Keith’s already guiding Shiro to a seat. He arranges Shiro towards the back of the bike, and wraps Shiro’s arms around his waist. Shiro lets him._  

_“Hold on,” Keith says. He flashes Shiro’s officer pass as he guns it out of the gates, kicking up a cloud of dust before the guards can question it._ _It’s best that Shiro doesn’t question any of this too closely, either. He’s had too much of questions, lately._

_They’ve taken jaunts into the desert before, but this one is different. Keith stops short in the middle of a hard packed mesa. They’ve pulled up in front of a small wooden building with a sagging porch. It's little more than a pinprick on the horizon from a thousand yards out._  

_“Keith?” Shiro, lost and more than a little drunk, can still tell that this is important. Monumental. That Keith, having seen the most vulnerable parts of Shiro, is offering equal pieces of himself in exchange._  

_“This is where I grew up.”_  

_//_

Shiro skids into the Garrison the next morning, covered in sand, ready to pretend he’s a grown up. He's barely in time to help out with the first year’s hand to hand combat training. His effort’s half hearted at best. Quarter hearted would be more accurate. He knows marrow-deep he’s left some part of himself out in the desert. There are pieces of him idling amidst the detritus of a life he'd only glimpsed through the gaps in Keith’s stories. 

Two dozen sets of eyes on him, some patched together excuses, and six deflated egos later, Shiro makes his way back to his room. He makes himself shower. He makes himself go to lunch. He makes himself pretend he doesn’t hear people speculating about his best friend drifting in the freezing expanse around Pluto’s moon. 

_Guess Kogane wasn’t as good as he thought_ , they say. This, despite the fact that none of them had come within a mile of Keith’s sim scores. _Bet Shirogane’s glad it wasn’t him._  

“I heard Holt’s sister broke into Iverson’s office,” says a cadet a few tables away. “She hacked into the system and threatened to go to the media. Got banned from Garrison grounds for life.” 

( _“Katie’s gonna apply for the Garrison in a few years,” Matt had said. “She’ll terrorize everyone in the engineering department—I can’t wait.”)_

“I heard she punched him in the face and that’s how he lost his eye.” 

A low whistle."What a fucking legend.” 

When Shiro leaves to return his tray there’s a new set of grooves bruised into the Garrison’s scuffed neon plastic tables. 

//

_Here’s what Shiro knows: Keith gives off an aura of impulsivity, but in reality he’s too many steps ahead to bother explaining his reasoning; Keith never raises his hand in class because he’s busy reading a more advanced textbook beneath his desk; Keith is difficult but devoted—and if you’ve earned that devotion you do your damned best to deserve it. It’s not something he offers lightly._  

_A month after Keith and Griffin’s fight, Shiro’s called into the first year classes for a demonstration. While he sometimes assists with classes, Adam’s the one who wanted to help cadets get their wings._  

_All Shiro’s ever wanted were the stars, for as long as he could have them._  

_They’ve must have asked him here for a reason._  

_Keith stands off to the side, arms folded over his chest, keeping his distance from his classmates. His eyes are always moving, always sussing out weaknesses. All the while, Keith’s classmates shoot him glances every so often, half disdain, half admiration._ _Shiro takes in their expression again and, yeah, okay more than half disdain._

_“Lieutenant Shirogane has graciously agreed to come to class today, so make it worth his time. If I see any of you half assing your effort,_ _I have no problem coming up with some very creative punishments. The fact that I haven’t come up with them already says that I have more faith in you than you deserve. Don’t make me regret it,” Commander Ryu says, sweeping his gaze across the crowd of cadets and landing on Keith last._  

_The cadets get paired up, and scatter. Towards the far edge of the gym, Keith stands the line of his body uncoiled, almost insultingly relaxed. On the other side of the mats, his opponent: an incensed James Griffin._  

_Keith’s not actually examining his nails, but his posture suggests that at any moment he might decide the most miniscule matters of personal hygiene are more important than his opponent._ _Shiro wants to laugh but after last month, Keith shouldn't be baiting Griffin like this. Shouldn't give the administration another reason to single him out from his peers. Griffin lunges and Keith dances away. It's the same push and pull for a while, after that. Keith he manages to shimmer out of Griffin’s reach whenever Griffin’s close to landing a strike, and Griffin gets sloppy in his anger. Keith is smaller, faster, more agile than his classmates—he’s clearly used to turning his size into an advantage._  

_The match drags out, far from merciful. Shiro can see Griffin’s frustration mounting. None of Keith’s moves are out of a textbook, but they work. Shiro's impressed by the way he moves, the way he reacts at lighting speed. Finally, Keith's had enough of toying with his prey. Griffin ends up pinned to the mat, wrists cuffed together over his head in Keith’s grasp. His face, red with fury, curls in on itself. He hisses something at Keith and Shiro sees Keith hold himself back before lunging in for an unobstructed strike. He gets one good hit in, before Lieutenant Ryu pulls him off by the collar of his shirt. Shiro can hear the fabric tearing, just a little._  

_Lieutenant Ryu’s face is almost as red as Griffin’s, his lips pressed together into a thin line._  

_That’s when Shiro realizes his presence here is more of a message than a reward._  

_He’s proved right when Ryu has him go up against against Keith immediately. It puts Keith at a disadvantage, with no chance to observe Shiro’s strategies._ _Keith stretches, the long line of his neck snapping as he works out the knots. He’s wearing ratty sweats that Shiro’s never seen before. The Garrison is strict about dress codes, and aside from the first time they met, Keith’s kept his end of the deal and toed the regulations. (For the most part, his hair, grown longer every day, brushes his collar with a defiant curl.)_  

_(It shouldn't surprise him that someone in the upper administration has a sadistic streak. Or maybe they just want him to see exactly who he’s sticking his neck out for.)_

_Shiro's electro-stimulators pulse of against his wrists. It’s been harder recently to let go of the knots threading themselves through his tendons. There's an ever present dull pain winding its way around his thighs like a vise._  

_Across the mats, Keith’s coiled, ready to strike. Shiro already knows that this isn’t going to end well. It’s clear that Keith was never meant to make it out of this with his pride intact._  

_(Sometimes, Shiro hates enduring Garrison culture of breaking someone down to build them up. Hates that he has to play his part in it to guarantee a one way ticket through the stratosphere.)_  

_Shiro readies himself. He can't go easy on him. Any hint that Shiro's pulling his punches and Keith will take it as an insult—and the rest of the class will take is as a confimation of their whispers._  

_Keith stays loose to avoid telegraphing his intentions. Then he lunges forward with a burst of speed, using his slight frame to needle through Shiro’s defences. But Shiro’s watched Keith’s fights, has some idea of how Keith moves. He takes a deep breath and dodges, Keith’s elbow clipping him in the ribs._  

Patience _, Shiro tells himself, whirling around to keep and eye on Keith who’s coming at him again, full tilt. Shiro sidesteps Keith’s attack again, winding one arm around the small of his back to wrestle him to the mat. Keith turns out of his grip so fast it’s inhuman and Shiro feels a burst of pride. It’s been a long time since anyone’s managed to worm their way out of that move and Keith’s_ still _moving. Mouth drawn down in a scowl, Keith’s eyes flicker over Shiro’s unsteady stance. He hurtles himself forward again before Shiro even blinks, feet barely skimming the surface of the mats as he flies forward._  

_Shiro mirrors him, smiling. The burn in his muscles feels good for once. If they wanted him to put on a show, he's game. It's just not going to be the one they want. He's going to give this his all, give Keith's abilities the respect they deserve. Give Keith the respect he deserves. He kicks Keith’s feet out from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor. Keith glares up at him and pushes his damp hair away from his face. He springs to his feet again before Shiro has a chance to pin him._  

_And then, contact._  

_It’s a good hit, right between two of Shiro’s ribs. Shiro doubles over, winded._ _Keith kicks out and tries to topple Shiro, but despite the flurry, Shiro stays standing._  

_They circle each other and Shiro can tell from the rise and fall of Keith’s chest that he’s starting to get tired. If Shiro times this right—_

_A bolt of pain ribbons up his left leg, like someone's cut the muscle in half and then stretched it back to fit. Shiro stumbles, falling to his knees. He's practiced this, getting through the pain without anyone knowing. He's had spasms in the sim, rising to his feet right after with a new record and no one the wiser. But there's a new variable at play: Keith who doesn't know about his disease and is desperate to win. Keith, who charges and keeps charging._  

_He can't anticipate Shiro's fall, and he aims too high, giving Shiro a clear shot at his knees._  

_He reaches out through the pain, swipes at Keith’s knees and pulls him down. Keith squirms, but Shiro holds tight. Keith twists his head around glares up at him from the mat. His arms are free but Shiro's got his legs trapped from an angel where Keith can't reach him._  

_"Ready to tap out?" Shiro asks._

_Keith opens his mouth but never gets a chance to answer._  

_“Excellent, Shirogane,” Lieutenant Ryu says, and Shiro starts. He’d forgotten they had an audience, caught up in the flow of the fight, the thrill of the challenge Keith had offered. It's been too long since someone at the Garrison made him sweat for it._  

_“Good match, cadet,” Shiro says, reaching a hand out for Keith. Keith rises to his feet on his, tugging down the hem of his shirt and pushing his hair out of his face. The rest of the cadets whisper behind their palms, eyes darting between the two of them._  

_They’re forming their own conclusions about Keith’s abilities, the fact that he’s here on Shiro’s recommendation. The fact that he’s_ stayed _here because of Shiro’s intervention._  

_Turning away, Keith strides over to the corner of the room, shoulders square. He ignores he whispers._  

_He doesn’t make eye contact with Shiro for the rest of the class._  

_He doesn’t show up for their scheduled meeting, either. Shiro stops by his room later but the door stays closed, the room stays quiet._  

_Adam had told him not to bother going after Keith when he’d skipped out on their meeting. “He has to learn him deal with this sort of thing on his own,” he’d said. “If the cadets were whispering about him being your pet project, this is only going to add fuel to the fire.”_  

_"He's not my pet project, Adam. He's his own person."_  

_Shiro’d left with a clench jawed smile._

_Adam had a point but Adam wasn’t there. He doesn’t know how deeply this is Shiro’s fault. He doesn't know how much Keith’s doing his best in spite of the inventive and singular roadblocks the Garrison kept throwing at him._  

_Shiro sighs and head to the roof. Although it’s been_ _broken for years—decades, the door in the east stairwell never fully closes and no one's bothered to report it. Shiro looks around, hopeful but there’s no dark figure hovering at the edge peering at the endless expanse of desert, no one sprawled across the roof’s floor, head tilted skyward. There’s no one besides him._  

_The Garrison is quiet, the night patrols a distant pinprick of light. Somewhere out there is a band of new cadets, testing their luck at sneaking past the sentries._  

_Shiro’s not sure how long he stands out here, staring at the stars. Under the night sky, he can push away hoping that against all the doctor’s warnings and Adam’s not-so-furtive frowns. He wants one last chance at the far reaches of Earth’s solar system before his disease makes it impossible._

_The door creaks open, a rush of warm air tickling his back._ _There’s a series of light footsteps and then there’s a brush of an elbow against his ribs, a burst of body heat against his side._ _Shiro doesn’t say anything. He has to let Keith speak on his own time._  

_“Adam let you come up here,” Keith says, finally. Shiro flinches. That was the one problem with letting yourself be vulnerable with another person; they knew which wounds hadn’t quite healed._  

_“Adam’s my boyfriend, not my keeper,” Shiro says. It feels a little less true, these days._ _Besides, Adam knows he went to look for Keith—it’s just that he had to wait until Keith found him, instead. “You weren’t in your room,” Shiro says, turning to look at Keith._  

_“Didn’t want to deal with my roommate,” Keith says. He keeps staring at the desert, starlight carving out the edges of his profile. “Did you go easy on me today?”_ _He asks. His voice is hard, testing._  

_Shiro’s walking a fine line, too much of a protest and Keith won’t be able to see the truth past his pride, too loose and it’ll seem like he doesn’t care at all._  

_“No one’s going to take it easy on you in real life, it’s not worth faking it on the mats.”_  

_Keith pauses, brow scrunching together. Then he nods. “Alright,” he says, but there's something unsettled simmering beneath the surface. Like he doesn't quite believe it. "So what was that, then?"_  

_"What was what?" Shiro asks. Because how do you explain that your finishing move wasn't strategy but your body giving out on you mid-fight?_  

_"You—I don't know, you fell...or something."_  

_"Maybe I was trying to keep you on your toes."_

_"More like flat on my back."_  

_“Look, Keith—”_

_"Don't go coddling me because I'm your pet project."_  

_"You're not my pet project—you're my friend."_

_Keith looks pleased for a moment before his brows draw together again. "That's not what everyone else says."_  

_"Since when do you care what everyone else says," Shiro exhales, blowing his bangs out of his eyes. They’re getting long. All his hair is. Maybe it’s time to try something different._

_Keith doesn't answer._

_“This isn’t about losing the match,” Shiro realizes._  

_“No. Well...not completely. You’ve got some good moves. I won’t go so easy on you, next time,” Keith says, the ghost of a smile curling the corner of his mouth._  

_“So what is it then?”_

_“Will they ever stop trying to make an example out of me?” Keith says, turning towards Shiro. “The rest of my class already looks at me like—” Keith breaks off and tugs at his jacket._

_“Like what?”_  

_“Not like they look at you, that’s for sure,” Keith snorts._  

_Shiro’s collar feels too tight. He frees the button from its clasp and lets the cool evening air sneak underneath._

_Keith takes a deep breath and Shiro waits. “How do you handle it? Everyone looks at you like you’re their savior. I don’t want that. I just want to fly,” he says._

_The picture clears; Keith’s otherness has always defined him—the things he lacks, the places he doesn’t quite fit. The Garrison was an opportunity for something different, but it had ended up as more of the same._

_And the truth was that Shiro hadn’t wanted this either—but no one had offered him a choice otherwise._  

_“Everyone needs to look up to someone, Keith.”_  

_“Yeah. But then that person isn't really a person anymore, are they? They’re ...an idea.”_  

_“Keith…” Shiro starts. The words stick in his throat. “How do you see me?”_

_Keith shrugs, easy as anything. “You’re just...Shiro. You're my friend.”_  

_Shiro hears the '_ right?' _Keith leaves unspoken_. 

_And Shiro, a little reckless and a lot grateful, pulls Keith in for a hug. Keith tenses in his arms before going limp, puffs of hot breath dancing through the opening of Shiro’s jacket, tickling his throat. Shiro could tell him now.  About what really happened during the fight. About the clock ticking underneath his skin. But, then he wouldn't be_ just Shiro _anymore._

_He isn't going to let his illness take something else from him._  

_“Thank you, Keith.”_  

_//_

The next few weeks pass in a thankless blur. Shiro holds his grief close, penning it in like a wild thing—hoping that time and restraint might tame it. He eats, he goes to class, he escapes to the shack. He grips his hands along the thread that leads to whatever’s at the center of the desert’s siren song. He claws towards the hope of something new. Rinse and repeat. 

The gym becomes a refuge where people watch him and learn not to seek him out. He begins to finesse the boundaries of his privileges even further and sneaks in when he’s sure no one’s there to watch. 

It’s better and worse to spend time in the places where Keith’s shadow still lingers. Where if he turns slowly enough, he can trick himself that Keith’s perennially stuck in his peripheral vision. Just out of sight, just out of reach, safe from the cold and unforgiving void of space. 

Safe from the fact that it’s Shiro’s fault he was there all. 

Still, time keeps moving, indifferent, relentless. 

A new class of cadets finds their way into the Garrison, bright eyed and scrawny with a determined set to their shoulders. It’s Shiro’s responsibility to make them realize that determination is only part of the equation. 

Shiro paces in front of them, reciting rote passages without any thought. It’s the glint of light off the glasses that catches his eye, and it's almost enough to make him stop in his tracks. They’re like the ones Matt wore before the Garrison paid for him to get his eyes fixed. Not that it had mattered much, in the end. 

Shiro shakes the errant thoughts loose. 

_Focus._  

_The cadet’s name is Gunderson_ , Shiro recalls—but he looks like a Holt. 

Training is the usual mess of fumbling punches and show offs pretending it's easy. Then, a scuffle breaks out between two cadets. Shiro pulls them apart, sees the dark blonde hair, the round glasses, the bone weary determination and tells cadet Gunderson _see me after class_. 

Shiro keeps an eye on him during class. Something’s not quite right—then few things snap into place. Shiro's taken back to the watery winter sunlight, the smell of exhaust lingering in the air, and the distant trail of smoke leading out into space.

The rest of the class passes without incident. Gunderson sits cross armed, in a corner, cataloguing his classmates strengths and weaknesses. 

The cadets file out in clumps. Shiro makes his way over to Gunderson, small and stubborn, defiant and messy haired. It reminds him of the younger, baby faced Keith who’d shown up with a chip on his shoulder bigger than the bag holding his things. 

“So? You wanted to see me?” Gunderson says, looking up at Shiro with eyes begging for a fight. 

“I did,” Shiro says. “Hello, Katie.” 


	2. remember your name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone keeps insisting that Keith is dead; no one but Shiro seems interested in keeping his memory alive. Keith is a dying flame, cradled in the cathedral between Shiro’s palms, and Shiro’s his sole shelter against the oncoming storm.
> 
> “No,” Shiro says. It’s the steadiest he’s felt during this entire conversation. “This—this isn’t about—I made a promise. I told Keith I'd never give up on him—and I won’t. _I won’t._ ”
> 
> “It's only a matter of time before one of our satellites finds the shuttle. And what sort of theory will it be then? How will you convince yourself he’s still out there?” Adam pauses, “How many times are you going to keep doing this to yourself?”
> 
> “As many times as it takes. Until I find him.”

_"Impossible," Iverson says. There’s a thick stack of papers on the desk next to him, and several battered folders beneath, their spines creased with wear from papers straining the binding. "Cadet Kogane has been an exemplary student the last year, but that’s one year compared to—" Iverson gestures at the avalanche of paper. "I'm not sure it's enough to make his case, despite your recommendation."_

_"I understand, sir, but Cadet Kogane is already two years older than the rest of his class. And he's made his way through all my old textbooks so the curriculum won't be an issue. I_ _know you've seen him fly. He's better than ninety percent of the officers here—and he's only getting better,” Shiro says._

And my health is not _, he doesn't say._

_Iverson reads between the silences. He sighs and drags a hand down his face. "I don't know what this kid did to get you on his side, but it must have been damn impressive."_

_"It was—is,” Shiro replies instantly._

_“I hope you know what you're asking, Shirogane," Iverson says._

_Shiro nods. He does; it's worth it._

_"We’ll get back to you.”_

_Shiro knows a dismissal when he hears one. The fact that he’s gotten this far is promising already, but he won’t say anything to Keith. Not yet._

_“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Adam asks, later. Shiro had slumped into their apartment later than usual that evening, and told Adam about his meeting over dinner, excited that he’d at least gotten Iverson to consider it._

_Adam frowns over the top of his mug. “The others in his class already think…”_

_"Think what?"_

_"Think that you—and everyone else—are playing favorites."_

_It’s not quite the reaction Shiro had hoped for._

_“Keith’s gotten where he is on his own merit,” Shiro says. It’s not as though Shiro hadn’t heard the same things about himself, years earlier._

_“I know that. And you know that—and Iverson knows it too. But the Garrison functions as a unit, not as a set of individuals. Keith gets singled out too often as it is already. And as much as he’d never say anything, I don’t think it’s been easy for him.”_

_“Nothing worth having is easy,” Shiro says._

_“Conflict doesn’t make for great team work, either,” Adam says._ _“The more advanced courses mean working with a flight crew, are you sure he’s ready for that?”_

_Shiro takes a deep breath; exhales. “We don’t even know if they’ll let Keith accelerate. This whole conversation may be for nothing.”_

_Adam’s a little too intent on cutting his food as he says, “I’m not so sure about that. Even if Keith stays in his class, the problems are already there.”_

//

Katie “call me Pidge” Holt becomes a constant fixture in his life. She’s the only one at the Garrison who still feels “pilot error” like a throb beneath the skin.

Together they traverse the borderlines of the pieces their lives are both missing.

He asks her about her classes, she asks him about his duties as an officer, and both of them try to pretend that they’re not just cobbling together a life like it’s paint by numbers. It’s a raw deal in every aspect aside from the way they handle one another. Shiro knows that _she_ knows more than she’s letting on. He also knows trust is earned rather than given—especially when your family gave their lives to an organization that declared them dead without question or remorse.

“The Kerberos Mission wasn’t pilot error. I've seen the logs,” she says. They’re on the roof. It's one of the only places they can talk at the Garrison without as much fear of being overheard. Still, they speak in whispers; “as much” fear is no guarantee.

There's certainty carved into the set of her mouth. And it's true, the story had never made sense; error after they’d already landed; error when Keith was the best pilot he’d ever seen.

"And..?"

"Their shuttle landed—but there’s no evidence of a crash.”

Shiro’s world—frigid and frozen for the last ten months—starts turning once more.

“Show me,” Shiro says. He needs to see, needs to know, even though he’s ready to dive in both feet first.

“So this,” Pidge says, fingers flying over her laptop keys, “is all the data I was able to scrape from the system. And _this_ ,” she opens another folder, “is what I was able to get on my flashdrive before Iverson found me in his office. My mom has a backup.”

Shiro pours over the satellite images of Kerberos, its surface unmarred and immaculate. No evidence of a crash.

“And you have proof they landed?” Shiro asks. He can’t tear his eyes from the screen. This moment is his ship hurtling through Earth’s upper atmosphere—the tipping point of truth where they'll either catch fire or take flight.

“Oh, they landed." Pidge pulls up a series of still images, and a log of raw data collected by the _Persephone_ —”If they’d never landed we wouldn’t have this. But we do. _I_ do.”

She pulls up another file and there it is. It’s all the proof Shiro needs.

They’re going to keep looking.

//

It’s hard to get time alone together without drawing suspicion and they keep having to invent reasons to meet. Shiro takes on responsibilities he wouldn’t otherwise, offers himself up for demonstrations he has no interest in. A few of the younger pilots crowd around him after the sim demos, asking for tips. Months ago, they’d all looked at Keith with narrowed eyes and upturned chins but now they’re all looking to be Shiro’s new pet project. As if that’s all Keith was— _is_ . But it’s a convenient cover story and he _likes_ Pidge. If it stops the rest of them from jockeying for the position, so much the better.

Pidge is incredible and infuriating, doing her best disassemble him whenever they spend time alone together.

(Or, maybe she glimpses the scattered mess that lies beneath the illusion of a whole.)

“Your hair is stupid,” Pidge tells him one day.

He rubs a hand over the shaved short sides of his undercut. It’s gotten a little longer than it should be but he's less invested in maintaining it than he used to be.

“That’s the first I’ve heard that particular criticism,” he says, wry but smiling.

“You’re Takashi Shirogane, Garrison golden boy–of course no one is brave or dumb enough to tell you your hair looks stupid.”

 _Keith told me he liked it,_ Shiro thinks.

“Noted," he says. "Anything else?”

“Your fixation on the cafeteria’s mac and cheese is horrifying.”

“Keith said—says the same thing.”

If Pidge catches his slip, she doesn’t let it show.

And so it goes.

//

They spend most nights on the roof, scanning the solar system for any sign of life.

For the most part, it’s just them and the stars.

Sometimes, Pidge will pick up a frequency a few oscillations short of resolving from static into sound.

But nothing sticks.

//

Shiro learns and relearns the worst parts of grief; forgetting and then, worse still: remembering.

Here’s what people forget to tell you: grief doesn’t deal in shoulds or straight lines. Grief is the way time and persistence wears ravines into canyons.  Grief is the way he wanders the Garrison lost in thought and finds himself at the door to Keith’s room, hand already poised to knock on the door. It’s the way that he'd ended up at Keith's room before they shattered his world with “pilot error,” but this time there’s no reassurance that in a few months until he’ll find Keith on the other side, waiting with the keys to his bike already in hand.

The Garrison may have lied, but the hard truth is that space itself is unforgiving and unlikely to give anyone a second chance.

Still, they keep searching.

“Anything?” Shiro asks.

It’s early September. They’ve been at this for a month already and it’s been eighty percent static and twenty percent low orbiting satellites.

Pidge shakes her head, taking off her glasses and wiping the lenses on her shirt. “No. Just the usual. I have a feeling we’re not looking in the right places.” She pauses before she slides the glasses back onto her face. “I—” she bites her lip, “I may not have been completely honest with you.”

"What do you mean?"

“I found this when I broke into Iverson’s office, too,” she says. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a flash drive and a set of headphones. “Listen.”

She presses play on the recording and even though the sound's corrupted, but Shiro hears one word clearly.

_Voltron._

"Voltron?”

Pidge shrugs. “You know about as much as I do. It seems like it might be some sort of super weapon. But whatever it is, the Garrison knew that someone’s out there looking for it. And they knew I knew—or that I might know. That’s why they banned me and my mom from the compound,” Pidge says. “But this is proof; my brother and father are out there somewhere, and I’m going to find them.” She turns to look at him, “and if they’re out there, then Keith’s out there, too.”

“What do you need from me?”

“I was only able to get so much off of Iverson’s computer before they found me and threw me out. I got most of his hard drive but…”

“But?”

She frowns. “I got kicked out of Iverson’s office before I could get everything. But—” she breaks off, pulling up a set of data that means absolutely nothing to Shiro. “I found these files, all of them corrupted. I think they may be above his clearance.”

And Shiro knows what she isn’t saying: that space has an infinite number of places and a doubly infinite number of spaces between them. Unless they have something more to go on, they’ve hit a dead end.

Which means—

“We need to break into Admiral Sanda’s office.” Shiro says.

//

The next day is a mess of nerves and adrenaline. Shiro keeps calm by counting his breaths, his heartbeats. He keeps calm by remembering the fact that tonight they may finally get answers.  

It has to be now. Whatever’s out there waiting in the desert has worked its way under his skin. It’s humming louder than ever now, an insistent, low din, present during every moment of his day. Something is coming and it’s coming soon. They need to be ready when it does.

Shiro has a sim demonstration that afternoon. It’s a bonus he didn’t expect; flying has a way of bringing him back to himself.

There are the usual new whispers; he’s not as good as he once was; his flight maneuvers don’t have the same ease they used to. He has to clench his jaw when one of his wrists sparks with pain during a difficult turn but he keeps it together. And in the end it doesn’t matter—he’s still the best pilot at this end of the solar system. He still miles above anyone else's score, aside from the one attributed to K. Kogane. It lives engraved in Shiro’s memory even if it’s already been scrubbed from the Garrison’s records.

He shrugs his shoulders as he gets out of the sim, working out some of the knots.

“Hey, that was amazing!” Someone says. Shiro turns. There’s a lanky, brown haired boy standing there, made of more excitement than muscle. He’s got a uneasy sway to his step, shifting his weight between the balls of his feet. Shiro puts on his best smile. It’s fake, but it’s not like there’s anyone here who’ll be able to spot the difference.

“Thanks,” Shiro says. He searches for a name to match the face. “Lance, right?”

“That’s me! I’m fighter class now. Once they accelerated Kei—” He breaks off mid sentence. It doesn’t matter; Shiro already knows how it ends. “Once a spot opened up.”

“Congratulations,” Shiro says, almost meaning it. He’s distracted. Only a few more hours...

He spots Pidge just over Lance’s shoulder, giving him a look he’s grown familiar with over the past few months: _Hurry up, we have places to be._

Lance says something, and Shiro nods along because it’s easier. Then Lance’s face lights up, which _oh no_. Shiro’s not exactly sure what he’s agreed to, but he’ll have figure it out later. That’s a problem for future him.

“What took you so long?”

“Sorry I got caught up,” he says.

Pidge looks back and squints. She sighs. “Alright. Well. Let’s go over tonight one last time.”

It’s quick and dirty and probably not enough of a plan for what they're about to do but it’s the best they’ve got. Then Pidge leaves and Shiro’s alone.

He doesn't know what to do. He wanders.

He loses track of where he is; all the halls in the Garrison look the same when you’re distracted and he doesn’t realize where he’s ended up until he runs right into someone.

“T—Shiro?”

Adam. He’d asked him to call him Shiro after they’d broken up, but forming new habits takes time, and undoing old ones, even longer. That much is clear because Shiro would like to blame habit rather than emotion for the fact that he’s ended up in front of the door to Keith’s old room.

(And it’s not the first time.)

“Adam.”

“What are you doing?”

 _What are you doing_ here? Months of arguing had Shiro a master at reading Adams silences.

“I lost track of where I was.”

Adam glances at the closed door to Keith’s room and then back to Shiro. It’s not Keith’s room anymore—it’s empty now. Shiro moved Keith’s things out himself. He placed them a small storage locker and keeps the key in his pocket on the ring with the rest like it’s just another artifact of his existence. But the weight and feel of it are anything but casual, it hits against his hip with every step, a constant beat of a reminder.

“I see.”

There’s a long, tense pause. Have they really reached the point where they have nothing left to say to each other?

“I’ll see you around, Adam,” Shiro says.

//

 _Shiro finds out that he’s flying the Kerberos mission on a Tuesday. It’s grey and overcast; the thick, humid air heralds an oncoming storm. Shiro’s uncharacteristically late to the class he’s TAing because he’d fought with Adam the night before. Adam hadn’t wanted him to apply at all. Adam hadn’t known Shiro had submitted his application until his name was already on the dotted line. But each beat of Shiro’s heart had screamed_ I want this, I want this, I want this.

_So he put in his application. He’d lost sleep over the fact that he wasn’t losing sleep, and then he kept going._

_Somehow arguments had become another part of their routine. Another day, another fight with Adam._

_He’d left that morning knowing he wouldn’t want to go back later. It hurt to go back to an apartment where his biggest dream was someone else’s biggest nightmare._

_Instead, he decides to take Keith out into the desert. It was easy to picture: Keith says yes, without hesitation, without regret, then later their backs against a threadbare blanket, the red glow of Mars visible with the portable telescope Shiro had stuffed into his bag before he’d left that morning. He'd left half-knowing, half-hoping that Keith would say yes when he asked._

_And Keith_ had _said yes._

_“I can barely see it,” Keith complains, pulling away from the telescope and turning towards Shiro. “You’re going to be even farther away—when you go to Kerberos,” Keith says. His mouth twitches, flickering into a frown for just a moment._

_“Keith, I haven’t been picked for the mission.”_

_“Not_ yet, _” Keith says._

_“There are no guarantees.”_

_“Even they’re not dumb enough to chose someone else.”_

_“High praise,” Shiro says. He tries looking stern but a snicker sneaks through. Keith’s known him long enough at this point that he isn’t fooled, anyways. Sometimes, it feels like Keith’s the only one who isn’t._

_“Just the truth,” Keith says, and Shiro feels a burst of warmth in his chest; Keith is bad at sucking up and he's an even worse liar._

_“They could pick you.” If anyone else got the mission, it would be Keith. Only four years younger than Shiro and already better;_ _no illness twisting its way through his muscles, determined to ground him._

_Keith rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right. No one’s gonna pick the problem child.”_

_It’s only partially true, though. Keith’s less of a problem child than he used to be. These days, he’s one of the Garrison’s greatest assets. “I keep telling you that you’re going to start getting deep space missions soon. Sam mentioned something about Mars.”_

_“Talk to me when it’s the Kuiper Belt.”_

_“I’m sure it’ll be the senior officers talking to you, then,” Shiro says, knocking his shoulder against Keith’s._

_Keith's answering smile sends a shiver up his spine._

_It’s getting cold and his leather jacket isn’t enough to ward off the chill of the desert after sunset. Although he tries to hide it, Shiro can see the tense line of Keith’s jaw, clenched to keep his teeth from chattering._

_“We should go back,” Shiro says. It’s half hearted. He’d stay out as long as he could, and Keith probably would too. But if they break curfew the Garrison would blame it on Keith. Shiro's supposed to be the responsible one but the truth is that he and Keith are cut from the same cloth—Shiro’s just better at papering over the evidence of his rebellions._

_Keith looks like he’s about to protest before an unreadable expression passes over his face. “Yeah, alright.”_

_The ride back is cool and quiet. Shiro thinks about Sam’s insistence they’ll be picking a pilot for the Kerberos mission soon; thinks of coming back to find Keith piloting a ship to even further reaches of the universe; thinks that maybe this is what ends up being the end of their friendship—time and distance and ambition doing them in._

_When Shiro shivers this time it’s not because of the wind.He parks his bike in the garage and slings an arm around Keith’s shoulder as they walk back._

_The hallways are too loud for this time of night and it only gets worse as they get closer to Shiro’s apartment. There’s a cluster of bodies just inside his front door—all greys, not a cadet uniform in sight._

_“Shirogane.” Iverson’s voice carries into the the hall. “Get inside, we’ve been waiting.”_

_“Takashi,” Adam says, quieter, but his voice still carries. His face is drawn and his arms are folded over his chest._

_“You’re cutting it close, Shirogane,” Admiral Sanda says, peering over the top of her glasses._

_“Congratulations first, reprimands second,” Iverson says._

_Shiro’s heart leaps into his throat. “Congratulations?”_

_“On being the first to pilot a Garrison shuttle to the edge of our solar system,” Iverson says. It may be a trick of the light but Shiro swears that he’s smiling._

_Excitement and anticipation crash over him, but he stands at attention. He does his best to play the part. “Thank you, sir, it’s an honor.”_

_“It goes without saying that this news doesn’t leave this apartment until the Garrison’s ready to make a public announcement,” Iverson says, eyes landing on Keith, idling just beyond Shiro’s shoulder. “No one aside from Lieutenant West and yourself are supposed to know just yet.”_

_Keith’s moves forward, standing at Shiro’s side, his chin raised. “Noted,_ sir. _”_

_“Be at the Dos Santos Memorial wing at 0800 tomorrow so we can begin mission briefing,” Commander Holt says, clapping a hand on his shoulder._

_“See you then, sir,” Shiro says. The others give him their congratulations and Shiro says all the right things in the appropriate places. Adam stands off the the side, tense. There’s a smile on his face but it’s worn and the threadbare stretch of it reveals the disappointment and worry lying beneath._

_And, though he told himself over and over again that they’d find a way through it, in the end, he knew it might come down to which of them Shiro could live without, Adam or the stars._

_If he were honest with himself, weighing his options was easier than it should have been._

_(Adam’s mistake was thinking that the list of things Shiro needed included being bound by gravity.)_

_//_

They make it into Sanda’s office unscathed by the skin of their teeth. Shiro picks the lock; he’d learned a few things from Keith, who’d told him that he never knew if they’d come in handy.

And he was right. Shiro swallows past the lump in his throat. Thinking about Keith isn’t going to help right now.

Pidge sets up, connecting her external drive to Sanda’s computer and starts needling her way through Sanda’s security.

“How long do you think this is going to take?” Shiro asks. Sanda's in a meeting and he’s depending on bureaucracy to draw it out and give them more time.

Pidge shrugs, fingers flying over the keyboard. “Hard to say, at least twenty minutes.”

“Okay, sure,” Shiro says. He glances between the progress bar and the door.

For a while the room is silent aside from the click of the keyboard.

“Matt’s birthday is coming up, you know,” Pidge says. Her voice wavers. She doesn’t look away from the screen. “I knew this was going to be the first year I had to celebrate without him but—”

“Keith’s, too.” Shiro says.

“October?”

“October 23rd.” Keith’s birthday was always set aside for the two of them. A year into Keith’s stay at the Garrison, Shiro had finally managed to get the date through determination and persistence borne from the dead certainty Keith hadn't celebrated in years. Adam had only half understood; he came from a big family, sympathy drawn from imagination rather than emotion and more afterimage than affect.

It had been even harder to get Keith to accept his gift.

_(“Shiro this is...you didn’t have to get me a gift.”  Keith had said. He’d stripped his gift of it’s messy wrapping job in two seconds flat then stared at the mug for another ten._

_“I wanted to.”_

_He runs his thumb over one of the tiny cartoon hippos. "I can't take this."_

_From the look on Keith’s face, Shiro knows this a bruise he shouldn't press. “Tell you what. I’ll keep it here and you can visit it whenever you want.”_

_Keith tilted his head, considering, placing it on some sort of internal scale where Shiro had no idea what was weighing down the other side. “Okay.”)_

You miss him,” Pidge says. It’s not a question. She frowns a little. “Shiro?” Pidge asks. The progress bar's only at thirty percent. “Can I ask you something?”

"...sure."

(Later; but not too much later he'll regret promising a Holt answers without full details of the terms.)

“Well. I know why I’m doing this. This is my family. But—” She looks at Shiro. “Why Keith?”

_Why Keith?_

It’s not a new question. Shiro's heard every variation of it, every permutation in both major and minor keys. Adam had asked it, standing in the smoldering wreckage of their relationship and facing the death defying hurricane of Shiro’s grief. Shiro had asked it, to himself, time and time again. But answer is ill-fitting; incomplete.

“I—”

He doesn’t know what to say.

(Later, much later, he’ll wonder if it’s just that he wasn’t ready to say it.)

“Oh,” Pidge says. It's the shortest, most awful sentence that Shiro’s ever heard aside from _pilot error._ Her  eyes are full of a humiliating combination of pity and understanding. “Hey, I get it. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

She keeps talking but Shiro doesn't hear the rest. It's all sound without meaning, drowned out by the static between his ears.  

He thinks of the involuntary pull of Keith’s room, earlier that day; thinks of how many times he’d singled him out as his safe haven; thinks of how many times Keith had done the same in turn.

“Hey Shiro?” Pidge says. But it’s tiny and distant, like it’s traveled light years to get to him.

( _“You spend so much time with him, it’s no wonder the other cadets talk,” Adam had said. “Are you really surprised? I think he sees you more than I do.”_

_And then, so low that Shiro wasn’t sure he’d caught it correctly, Adam muttered, “and I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”)_

“Shiro?” she says again.

"Yeah?" He pushes it down; he doesn’t have the luxury of dealing with this right now.

"Do you need—"

She never gets to finish her thought. Down the hall, a series of footsteps echo, loud enough that they can hear them through Sanda’s closed door.

“We need to go.” Shiro tugs Pidge out of her chair. The footsteps sound closer. The progress bar isn’t done loading but it’ll have to be good enough.

“Almost done,” she says, typing frantically.

The footsteps grow, louder, insistent.

“We don’t have time,” Shiro hisses.

“We still have a few minutes. I can do this.”

“It’s not your abilities I’m worried about.”

If they get caught, there’s only so much Shiro can do for her. At this point, he’s not sure what he could do for himself either. But with his chances of getting into space currently sitting at less than zero he doesn’t care.

Shiro hesitates, strides over to the door as quick and quiet as he can. He presses his ear to the seam and hears the distant hum of voices making their way into a nearby hall, drawing closer. This time of night, echoes carry.

“Pidge we need to get out of here _now.”_

_“Almost—”_

Shiro ejects the drive, stuffs it into Pidge’s bag, and grabs Pidge’s arm.

“ _Now._ ”

“I’m not done!”

“If we stay here we won’t have anything at all.”

“I can get it if you just give me a few more—”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. She drags her feet as he tugs her into the hallway then around the corner and into the next hall.

She opens her mouth, but—

“Kogane was a loss but ultimately expendable. The real problem is that if Shirogane continues declining —”

This time, Pidge pulls Shiro away before they can hear anymore.

It seems that Shiro’s time is limited in more ways than one.

//

_Shiro invites Keith into the apartment. He’s still in shock that they chose him and he pulls two mugs from the kitchen cabinet on instinct and routine. They’ll make the last sliver of time before curfew count with hot chocolate on the couch; staving off an imminent argument is just a sizable bonus._

_“Congratulations, Shiro,” Keith says. He looks down at his mug, the one Shiro bought him for his last birthday. “I’ll miss you but—you deserve this,” he looks up, “you’ve earned this.”_

_Shiro puts his mug down and curls an arm around Keith’s shoulder, pulling him into a hug. “I’ll miss you, too,” he says, face pressed into Keith’s hair._

_For Shiro it’s already a foregone conclusion; he's going. He’s worked his entire life for a chance to sail among the stars, and he only has a short window left—one that’s drawing shorter every day._

_Things fall into an uneasy routine._

_Keith helps Shiro prepare for the mission while everyone else tries to convince him not to go._

_Shiro spends more and more time with Keith, who never tells him what he should want.They spend long evening hours sparring or riding into the desert to map the stars._

_Adam is strong and determined and full of conviction. Their fights weaponize everything about him that Shiro fell in love with. There are temporary truces and transient white flags, but this is a drop straight from the stratosphere and there’s not enough insulation to keep them safe from the fire consuming them._

_“Another bad day?” Keith asks. It’s still bright, they've got a few hours before the sun bleeds below the horizon. They’ve stopped for the time being to pull out the bottles of water Shiro keeps beneath the seat of his bike. Shiro’s shaved the sides of his head but Keith’s hair has gotten even longer. He has to use a hairband to tie it back now._

_"Not once I kick your ass," Shiro says. He knows that’s not what Keith’s asking, but this is easier._

_Keith’s brows draw together and he looks away for a second._

_When he turns back there’s a wicked grin arcing across his lips. “Good. Then it won’t matter that I got a head start,” Keith says, swinging one leg over the side of his bike and revving it to max speed._

Brat _, Shiro thinks and he mounts his bike. Then he grins, grips the handles tighter, and guns it._

 _Shiro knows exactly where Keith’s headed as soon as he puts the bike in gear. There’s a set of ravines ahead, snaking through the desert with the perfect set of hairpin turns just wide enough for a hoverbike. It's one of their favorite courses. It’s become something of a ritual for the two of them to take to the ravine and just_ go.

_Keith beat Shiro's record a few weeks ago which means today is the perfect day for Shiro's to take it back._

_Shiro can see the tail end of Keith’s bike every time he whips around a curve. Sometimes he gets close enough to smell the exhaust but Keith had a good headstart on him and he’s using it to his advantage. But then the ravine evens out for a few hundred feet and Shiro’s able to narrow the gap._

_Keith’s bike glints up ahead, and he doesn't spare a glance before guiding his bike through a sharp dip.  The rock face here hangs down lower and forces riders to bottom out along the dried up river banks._

_Shiro follows through the cloud of dust Keith kicks up behind him, pushing his bike to its limits and cutting the remaining distance between them in half._

_And then Keith makes the fatal mistake of looking back for half a second, eyes bright, hair shaking lose from it’s tie._

_“You’ll have to do better than that. Maybe you’re too old to give me a challenge anymore!”_

_It’s all it takes for Keith to lose sight of the distance between himself and the rock face. He’s hurtling right towards it, all flashing teeth and sharp edges as he teases Shiro—and Shiro can’t hear anything that he’s saying over the sound of the imagined crash, the sound of metal splintering against rock._

_“Keith!” Shiro yells. Keith just laughs._

_Shiro’s bike is pushing the breaking point but if Keith keeps going then he’ll have met his and pushed past it._

_Shiro turns his bike sideways, swiveling through a narrow pass just above Keith and forcing him to slow down to make space for Shiro._

_Keith’s eyes fly open as he takes in how close he is to the rock face, pulling back just as Shiro skids a little too close, clipping his elbow against the rock and denting the tail end of his bike with a sickening crunch._

//

No one’s in the hoverbike bay this time of night, and it’s easy to take Keith’s old bike and just _go_.

It only takes an hour to make it to the shack. A bitterly cold hour, with the desert spitting up sand beneath their feet and wind skinning them raw. But, Shiro knows there’s a safe haven ahead, more of a refuge than Keith ever realized.

It’s the first time Shiro’s brought anyone else here.

He can see Pidge holding back her questions as they park the bike and head in, porch steps creaking beneath their feet.

Shiro finds one of the kerosene lamps stashed in the crate closest to the door. It’s not really necessary—starlight slips in through the slats of the shack, washing the maps pasted on the walls in muted blues and purples and giving them enough light to see. Still, without a lamp, Shiro feels like he’s trespassing rather than visiting.

“What is this place?” She asks.

“Somewhere the Garrison can’t overhear us.”

Pidge is still frowning but she nods. She pulls her laptop out of her thick canvas bag and starts to get set up on the mess of crates that serve as a makeshift coffee table.

“Alright. I’d guess we’ve got till sunlight till someone notices we’re missing.”

“Anything I can do?” Shiro asks.

Pidge grimaces. “Not really. Make yourself at home, I guess,” she says, casting a dubious look around.

Shiro can't argue with that. There’s not much to do besides pour over star charts, or go through Keith’s things. So far he’s resisted the later, but—

There’s a stack of crates against the wall closest to the bed that hasn’t accumulated the same thick blanket of dust the others have. And he’s wondered—

Shiro wanders over tracing a finger over the lid. It comes back clean.

“What’s in those, anyway?” Pidge asks. She’s still hunched over her keys, frown burrowed between her brows.  

“Not sure.” But the answer is just the lift of a lid away and it might be something useful. It might be something Shiro doesn’t want to know at all.

Shiro pries the lid off the top one and it comes off without struggle. Just below there’s a thick sheaf of creamy paper, completely blank. Shiro picks those up and hooks them under one of his arms while he looks at what lies beneath. Explosives: a whole pile of C4.

“What is it?”

“Explosives.”

Pidge actually looks up from her computer screen at that. “The way things are going, I feel like I should have expected that.” She looks around, “who did you say this place belongs to, again?”

He didn’t. “A friend.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Some friend.”

“He inherited the place,” Shiro says. He doesn’t need to defend Keith to Pidge, but Keith hadn’t needed Shiro to defend him as many times as he did anyways. One more wouldn’t hurt.

“Did he inherit the explosives, too?”

Shiro shrugs. “Maybe. Any luck?”

Pidge narrows her eyes at him but turns back to her screen. “Yeah, I’m almost done.”

Shiro moves over to sit beside her, papers crinkling as he shifts them from under his arm to his lap. He fiddles with the edges of the paper and his fingers come away dirty. When he rubs them together it smears across the pads of his thumb and forefingers. Charcoal.

He glances at Pidge but she’s still staring rapt at her computer screen. He hesitates for just a moment and then flips the pages.

_Oh._

It’s him. Or, some version of him immortalized in charcoal pencil. He never makes direct eye contact with the artist, but his face is peaceful, happy. It's a look that he hasn’t seen in almost a year.

“And… got it,” Pidge says.

Shiro turns the drawings back over. No one—not even Shiro—was meant to see them.

That doesn’t mean he wants to stop looking.

“Shiro?” Pidge says, she holds out a set of headphones for each of them, plugged into the audio splitter on her laptop. Even this far out into the desert, there’s no way to know who might be listening.

Shiro slips the headphones over his ears and Pidge presses play.

//

 _“Shiro?_ Shiro!” _Keith calls. He’s bullied his way to Shiro’s side in an instant, batting Shiro’s hands away from left arm. It's folded awkwardly against his side and bent at an angle he doesn’t want to think about. “What the fuck?”_

_“You were going to crash. You didn’t—” Shiro starts, but there’s too much dust and he coughs his way through the rest of the sentence._

_“Then I would have crashed! You should have let me, I would have deserved it!”_

_Shiro looks at Keith, flat, unamused, uncompromising. “I wouldn’t and you wouldn’t,” he says. He looks at the half mangled remains of his bike lying at the bottom of the canyon. They’ll have to come back for it another day. For now—_

_“Let’s just go home.”_

_//_

“ _—some sort of primitive scientists.”_

_“Take them back to the fleet, the druids will find out what they know.”_

Shiro pulls one side of the headphones off, keeping the other cupped around his ear. He doesn’t want to let go.

 _The Garrison knew the whole time._ They knew it wasn’t pilot error but they’d still shoved that mistake onto Keith’s shoulders. They knew he had no family, no one to stand up for him and demand answers—no one aside from Shiro, who’d made toeing the line such an art form they thought they could trust him to never step over it. And Shiro would make them regret it.

Sam and Matt had always dreamed of finding alien life.  It sounded like the aliens had found them first.

//

 _Shiro spends the drive back to the Garrison with his good arm slung around Keith’s waist and his bad one folded against his side._ Let’s go home _, Shiro had said and Keith’s face settled into a careful blankness._

_He’s never seen Keith drive this slow._

_As soon as they get back to Shiro’s apartment Keith, still stony and silent, had guides Shiro onto the couch. He starts bandaging Shiro’s arm, dredging up whatever knowledge lingers from their field first-aid courses.  He makes about noises about taking Shiro to the infirmary but if Keith brings him, it'll only mean more trouble for them both. He'd have to wait for Adam._

_Keith looks at his work, makes a soft, disgruntled noise, and then gets up to grab an ice pack from the freezer. He resettles on the sofa next to Shiro with a fixed frown._

_There's the sound of a key scraping against the lock.  Keith pauses and turns, his hand slipping a little from where he’s holding a towel wrapped ice pack against Shiro’s arm to help curb the swelling._ _Shiro braces himself as the door to the apartment creaks open._

_“Hey, I brought dinner—” Adam starts.“What happened?”_

_It’s an indictment not a question._

_“There was an accident,” Shiro says._

_“I see,” Adam says. He walks toward the breakfast bar and drops the bag of food on the counter before turning back to face Shiro, left hand massaging his temple._

_“Keith was just helping me ice it for now,” Shiro says. Keith’s hand drifts from the ice pack to give Shiro a little squeeze of support._

_“Did you go to the infirmary?” Adam says. He sounds like he already guessed the answer before asking. Keith’s fingers tighten around the ice pack._

_“I was waiting for you to get home before I went,” Shiro says. He’s hedging. It’s only partly true, but it’s the part that he wants to tell Adam, and the part he’s okay with them talking about in front of Keith._

_Keith shifts on the couch next to him._

_“I’m gonna—I’ve got reports to fill out,” Keith says, scooting away from Shiro and rising to his feet. Shiro can tell it’s true, but only just. Mostly because it's plausible. Keith is an abysmal liar and he’s not doing that frantic “glancing from side to side for an escape route” thing he does when he’s dug himself in real deep and before blurting out the least believable excuse._

_"Good night," Keith says over his shoulder, halfway to the door._

_Already the space beside Shiro on the couch feels cold and empty. “Good night, Keith. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. It's a promise, of sorts. Keith shoots him a half-curl of a smile from the doorway before disappearing into the hall._

_The door doesn’t even close before Adam starts. “What were you thinking?”_

_He takes Keith’s place on the couch, holding the ice pack against Shiro’s arm and brushing his fingers over the tender skin. “I think it's just a sprain. You’re lucky this isn't worse.”_

_“It was an accident.” Well, crashing into the rock face was, protecting Keith wasn’t._

_“How did it happen?”_

_Shiro sighs. “Keith and I were racing in the canyons—”_

_Adam makes a small noise._

_“—and he wasn’t looking where he was going, he was—” teasing_ , _“celebrating, and I guess he lost track of where he was for a moment.”_

_“If he’s the one who wasn’t looking where he was going, then why did you end up injured?”_

_“I tried to head him off before he hit the wall of the canyon—”_

_“—but you hit it instead,” Adam sighs. “Are you even going to let me take you to the infirmary?” he asks. He's not meeting Shiro's eyes; he’s looking at the blotchy pink skin of Shiro’s elbow, flushed and frozen from where the ice pack’s slipped free of the towel and rested too long against bare skin._

_Shiro hesitates. If he goes to the infirmary, they’re bound to report it to Iverson and Admiral Sanda. It would be all the excuse they’d need._

_“Can you take me to the hospital in town?” Shiro says. He knows that his arm isn’t going to set itself, but—_

_Adam clenches his jaw. “You’re not even going to take responsibility for hurting yourself.”_

_“Ad—”_

_“No. Of course not. That would mean you’re not as unbreakable as you want everyone to believe. This is your life at stake and you’re out there playing games. Being reckless.”_

_“Yeah, it’s a game. Just something as reckless as enjoying myself,” Shiro’s arm throbs. He bites the inside of his cheek._

_“There are ways to enjoy yourself that don’t involve you coming home with a broken arm!”_

_"I thought it was just a sprain," Shiro says. He knows it's the wrong thing to say but he’s angry enough that he doesn't regret it._

_‘It doesn’t matter if it’s broken or a sprain, you’re not going to be able to use it for a few weeks either way,” Adam says. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe… maybe you need to spend less time with Keith. He’s only encouraging you to put yourself at risk.”_

_“He’s not encouraging_ anything. _We’re just spending time together. He’s my best friend,” Shiro says._

_Adam flinches. “I thought I was your best friend.”_

_Shiro looks down at his hand, clenches and unclenches without even a tremor. It hurts because it's true. It hurts because Shiro doesn’t have any reassurance to offer._

_“What did he say about you going to Kerberos?”_

_“He’s happy for me.”_

_“Does he know?” Adam asks. Shiro’s silence says enough. “Right. Of course not. I’m the one who has to be the villain and help you put yourself back together after.”_

_“You’re not the villain,” Shiro says, quietly. He stares down at his arm, flexing his fingers against the burn. Then he turns to meet Adam’s eyes. “But you keep treating me like I am my illness instead of the man you fell in love with.”_

_Adam sighs, and looks away, shoulders tight. He stands. “Is your car in the back?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Wait here. I’ll pull it around and take you to the hospital,” Adam says. He pauses in the doorway and turns to look back. “You’re not two separate people, you know. No matter how much you want to pretend you are.”_

//

Adam comes to see him. Seeks him out again, just once. It’s late and the senior officer’s lounge has emptied for the evening. Shiro lingers long after everyone else has left—he dreads going back to his room. It’s too big for one person. All the dim corners and hollow spaces only serve as a reminder for the things he’s lost.

“Hey,” Adam says. His voice is soft and gentle and familiar. So different from the constant worry and anger during the last months of their relationship, as the threads that bound them to one another unravelled one by one.  “How are you holding up?”

“I’m holding up,” Shiro says, mouth cracking around the edges of his smile. He doesn’t bother elaborating; there are pieces of Shiro that Adam’s lost the right to see.

“ _Shiro._ ”

“I’m fine,” Shiro insists. His hands shiver where they're wrapped around his mug of tea. He clenches his jaw and tries to steady himself. Adam notices anyways.

“I know you better than to believe that. You don’t have to lie to me,” Adam says, sitting down across from Shiro.

_(They lied. They knew the whole time.)_

Shiro looks up. “I’ll stop lying when the Garrison does.”

Adam arches an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“It’s wasn’t pilot error. You know that.  You know they’re lying.”

Adam sighs, “I don’t, actually. It’s not a lie, it’s conjecture. We don’t know exactly what happened out there. Pilot error, something else—this is the most probable cause, statistically. You know that as well as I do. It’s not personal.”

“It _is_ personal; you know they’ve always seen Keith as talented but expendable.”

“The only thing I know is that you need to let this rest. For your own sake.”

Everyone keeps insisting that Keith is dead; no one but Shiro seems interested in keeping his memory alive. Keith is a dying flame, cradled in the cathedral between Shiro’s palms and Shiro is his sole shelter against the oncoming storm.

“No,” Shiro says. It’s the steadiest he’s felt during this entire conversation. “This—this isn’t about—” Shiro stops because can he explain it when it’s always been actions, not words. How do you explain a thread that ties you to someone else at the defiance of time and probability and the vastness of space? “I made a promise. I told Keith I'd never give up on him—and I won’t. I _won’t._ ”

 _I can’t._ That’s what Shiro means. They both know it. Keith took Shiro’s place on the Kerberos mission off of Shiro’s recommendation; it’s Shiro’s fault he’s out there at all and giving up on Keith is like giving up on himself.

Adam’s face falls into something quieter, meaner. "You've given up on people before. I don’t see why he’s so different.”

Shiro grips his mug tighter.

“Let them go. Let _him_ go.”

Shiro stays silent.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Adam says.

“Well, we both know you always have to be right.”

Adam flushes with anger. “You think I wanted to be right? You think I wanted you to break your leg? You think I wanted Keith dead? You think I wanted _any_ of this?”

“No. I don’t. But it didn’t stop you from saying it. All of it,” Shiro says. He can still smell the bitter antiseptic sting of the hospital room.

“I said it because I cared about you. I still do. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

Shiro’s hands are shaking, whether from anger or something else—he can’t say for sure. “Well, thanks for checking in on me,” he bites out. “I’m just fine.”

“Damn it Shiro, stop shutting me out!”

“I think both of us made it clear where we stand on ultimatums,” Shiro replies.

Adam flinches. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Shiro still remembers how it felt under his fingers. “It's only a matter of time before one of our satellites finds the shuttle. And what sort of theory will it be then? How will you convince yourself he’s still out there?” Adam pauses, “How many times are you going to keep doing this to yourself?”

“As many times as it takes. Until I find him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you:  
> -liz for an early beta read  
> -em for offering to look at a late draft  
> -kaii for all your help untangling plot threads  
> -audrey for also helping me untangle plot threads  
> -robin for...god...letting me yell about this all the time and all the support  
> -katy for suffering through this au with me since july. a hero. 
> 
> and thank you for reading, see you for chapter 3!

**Author's Note:**

> on [ tumblr](http://spookyfoot.tumblr.com) and on [ twitter](http://twitter.com/spooky_foot).
> 
> for the "presumed dead" trope on my Voltron bingo card.


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